The Living City Challenge: Creating Restorative Future Cities

The Living City Challenge redefines the future of architecture and communities into a radical new low-tech vision that is more integrated with nature and connects people.

While LEED buildings offer a checklist, Living Buildings restore the environment and communities by creating more energy than they need, developing a sense of beauty, cultivating social networks, and incubating new businesses. Building densely with mixed uses, shifting to walking, biking, and transit, and Do It Yourself (DIY) practices of co-creating and co-constructing emergent cities engages people. Some cities have charted a bright green future while others are self-destructing. 2050 cities are shaping their futures today.

Who should attend: Anyone interested in urbanization, sustainability, and radically transforming 21st Century cities into robust communities and healthy lifestyles that balance planet, people, and prosperity.

What you’ll learn: Participants will learn about bright green technologies, social technologies, and community building that create lively future cities, using real world experiences.

How this knowledge can be applied: People will expand their ideas about green cities, and be able to work with their clients and communities towards creating restorative environments and thriving cities.

Cindy Frewen-Wuellner, architect, founder of Frewen Architects Inc, and adjunct profession of Strategic foresight in the Futures Studies graduate program, University of Houston, Leawood, Kansas.

Jason McLennan, CEO, Cascadia Green Building Council, author Living Building Challenge Standard, created the next new paradigm for sustainable building, Seattle, Washington

key words: cities, sustainability, urban, DIY, design, communities

issue areas: Resources and Environment, Social and Cultural Trends, and Technology and Science